Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Your book « Conjuring Hitler » received a laudatory criticism of our friend Peter Dale Scott. Moreover, I share the view of this great intellectual on the fact that this book is essential in the work of historical research. How did you arrive at conclusions against the flow of the historians of the establishment, namely that Hitler was made by the United States and Great Britain and that World War II was inevitable?

Dr. Guido G. Preparata: I started out like most westerners, whose childhood was steeped in the typical propagandistic “currents” of the Cold War: by watching, endlessly and enthusiastically, epic pro-Allies and anti-German war movies. My parents —postwar Italians— were solidly in the pro-US, pro-Israel, pro-capitalist camp, and my father, an academic physicist, was then militantly anti-Communist. That is what I grew up with. We were enthusiastic “Americanists,” and were awed by British “class.” Though superficially proud of our “classical,” “Greco-Latin” heritage, we, deep down, suffered from the typical inferiority complex exhibited by nationals of spiritually defeated, irrelevant countries.

Then the Berlin Wall came down and most of us slowly began to unravel from some kind of stupor. When I began working at the central bank of Italy in the mid-90s, I chose in my free time to tap the Bank’s library in order to study Nazi Finance, which I saw as an esoteric and exotic theme. And from there, I started digging. What I remembered from those war movies I saw as I child was the narrative, always the same, and the point of attack: the action begins when these monsters (e.g., the SS) are already fully formed and extraordinarily truculent, vicious. That makes for great cinema, of course, but it begs far bigger questions: how did that happen? How did this phenomenon emerge? How did the world allow that to happen? How could this be?

I spent 10 years of my life reading and thinking about this. I collected material and archival documents in Germany and at the Bank of England, talked to people, experts, politicians, etc. The result of all this is Conjuring Hitler.

And what I found is that, although the phenomenon of Nazism itself —its deep, esoteric roots—is indubitably German, in ways we have yet to understand fully, the (political and economic) conditions in which it was allowed to breed, to incubate had been, in my view, unquestionably favored, predisposed by Britain, and to a less extent by the USA, though later in game, and always under the strategic, unchallenged leadership of Britain.

Why Britain? Because she was and, in a way, still is, the mistress of world. This is her time. She rules, and, apparently, she will do anything in her might to keep that power. Today, the US, as we all know, is simply continuing in the geopolitical tracks of the British Empire.

Was the war inevitable? Yes it was: when in 1900 Germany thought she could challenge Britain’s mastery, the latter, clearly, had to act. If you add to this that Germany’s eventual supremacy, through clever strategizing, could have entailed a harnessing of Russia to “Teuton” martial and technological initiative, then you could envision what was for British circles the ultimate geopolitical nightmare: a “Eurasian Alliance,” which would have been, de facto, invincible. And the carnage that ensued in the first half of the 20th century is the chronicle of the pre-emptive move the British were “forced” to set in motion in order to avoid the materialization of this scenario.

“They” say: when she started rocking the boat in 1890-1900 or so, Germany was belligerent, militaristic, aggressive, and imperialist. Absolutely. And Britain, I may add, a thousand times more so. In 1914, Germany wanted a “fast war” to consolidate what appeared like a middle-European kingdom with colonial annexes. She got Britain’s war instead: the Great War.

You demonstrate with pertinence Hitler’s ties with the ruling classes in Great Britain and the United States. However, you are focusing on the role of Great Britain. Can you explain us why?

For the reasons just explained. For the past 200 years we are playing England’s game, none other’s, really.

How do you explain that these two powers, the United States and Great Britain, who financed and supported Nazism, developed a propaganda machine via Hollywood that gives them the best role by showing them anti-Nazi?

Well, when in 1916-1917 the Eastern front fell with the defection of Russia, England brought in the US. Eventually Germany, feeling overwhelmed —for WWI was essentially a siege, a siege around Germany— surrendered. Which implied that she had not been defeated on her own soil. In other terms, the German/Eurasian menace had not been annihilated once and for all. To that end, a scheme began, which lasted essentially 20 years; and the scheme was 1) to revamp Germany (“set her up,” truly) and 2) destroy her, again, in a two-front war.

That this was indeed planned is testified by Thorstein Veblen’s extraordinary 1920 prediction, according to which the true design of the Treaty of Versailles was to incubate a reactionary regime in Germany through a radicalization of the middle-class, and finally unleash this new force against Soviet Russia, which prediction came to pass in June 1941. This is sensational. To my knowledge, I am the only one who has had the decency to cite this unique, genial testimony.

But things evolved more wildly than even a genius like Veblen could have foreseen. The movement whose ascent he prophesied was not just “reactionary”: it was something altogether new, different, more sinister and fiendish. The Nazis swallowed up the old monarchist guard, which, by 1932 had come to attract less than 10 percent of the popular vote.

And, as for demonizing the vanquished enemy, the Germans could not have made Anglo-America a more glorious gift: it is as if they gratuitously and catastrophically cast themselves as the Anti-Christ, really. Which, conversely, implied that Anglo-America’s troops and commanders had to be the legions of God. The latter were also the Techno-knights of Hiroshima, as I like to call them, and I am not sure what God has to do with any of this. I rather see the Devil’s footprints everywhere.

Be that as it may, at this point, the victors had the most powerful narrative, the most powerful militant myth one could think of: i.e., the crushing of the demoniacal Nazis as a God-given, manifest acknowledgement of their (the Allies’) spiritual superiority, of their deserved triumph. In the mythological name of which, in fact, they are still waging wars around the world, to this day, with impunity. For human rights, democracy, and peace-keeping, “they” say.

This narrative is the most wonderful piece of propagandistic capital one could possess: it has yielded, and still yields phenomenal rents.

Any attempt to “revise” it will be met with the most violent and categorical castigation. And any historical evidence running against it will be suppressed or “interpreted” in ways congruent with the official version, naturally.

Your book « The Ideology of Tyranny » explains the work of Foucault, postmodernism, George Bataille and his followers, but it also evokes the bankruptcy of the left. Does not this synthesis, which you have established, lead to a fatality, that is to say, war, even the end of humanity?

“End of humanity” sounds dramatic and terrifying. But, in a way, yes: I think they want to turn us all into a global society of termites. And they are succeeding.

Can you explain to our readers your concept of « techno structure »?

The concept is not original. It may be found in a variety of authors who described the automatization of society in the 1960s and 1970s.

It is widely acknowledged that most of our social interactions are managed by and go through “structures” (corporations, ministries, organizations, etc), certainly not “the market” (it is reckoned nowadays that the market handles not more than ca. 20 percent of all economic transactions). The “Techno-Structure” is what in pop iconography is known as” The Matrix”: i.e. a giant, soulless apparatus of social coordination, which transcends “Left” and “Right,” “Public” and “Private” and seeks to control humanity like, in point of fact, a termitary, an ant-heap, a hive.

I do not see the Techno-Structure as the postmodern leftists, though: i.e. as some kind of headless monster, which has emerged out of nowhere and lives and breathes through a collective and unconscious hallucination. I find this interpretation (à la Baudrillard) postmodern hogwash, in the sense that it uses discursive tricks (psychologistic metaphors) to hide political malfeasance, i.e. the (criminal) responsibility of those in charge of the Matrix itself (the élites), in fact. It is corrupt, corrupting discourse. I envision the Techno-Structure like a conscious development of the hierarchies of power in our hyper-modern era, and solidly driven by a specific leadership —Anglo-American metropolitan whites and their European vassals— who perfectly know what they are doing and how they are doing it.

How do you explain the emergence of LGBT people and what is the ultimate goal of this organization?

I have devoted a two-part post to this very topic in my blog Ad Triarios, to which I would most eagerly direct the reader: therein, I discuss this important issue in detail.

In essence, the way I see it, the story goes like this.

For consolidating their grip on society the powers that be have to tighten control on the one hand, and pre-empt any kind of (intellectual and affective) resistance, on the other.

This sort of operation, which they calibrate daily, is conducted, as we know, on many fronts: control of belief and desire, propaganda, narratives, etc., as well as economic conditionings of all sorts, of course.

It appears that, though docile and malleable, the old patriarchal model of the male bread-winner earning enough to feed comfortably a family of 4, or 5 mouths —the old middle-class standard— must have been deemed not fully dependable, control-wise: despite all constraints, the middle-class nucleus still seemed to enjoy “too much” independence, both financial and spiritual.

So they had to undo this template, somehow. This was going to take time because, de facto, much hinged on the image of the “macho,” socially speaking. Clearly, this work of societal re-design meant debilitating the familial nucleus itself. The macho has served its purpose; it is now time to discard, scrap him; and the System is doing so by immolating him publicly in a grand game of discursive terror.

They always conduct their campaigns with great skill, i.e. by leveraging real, tangible dysfunctions —such as, to begin with, the subdued, semi-hallucinated, idle, and often degraded status of women under this macho tutelage (a jaundiced advertence to the sexist clichés of the 50s is typical in this regard). They leverage real problems to promote obliquely an altogether different agenda, which has nothing to do with the spiritual disaffection of women, yet is designed to manipulate it.

So you had feminism. The result, however, was that women were not in the least “emancipated,” as they had been “promised”: they left the hallucinated confinement in the kitchen only to rejoin their spouses in doing the same mind-deadening jobs for less pay, and overall less pay for both of them filing taxes together.

And now, you have less money, more worries, and the same amount of mounting stress affecting both parents.

In the 1980s they applied this trick to “race.” The US is a thoroughgoing racist country that, seemingly, is rather unwilling to cure itself of this psychological malady. So, instead of attacking the problem head-on, the chiefs of propaganda devised a simple discursive expedient to cover and suppress the issue: via a regime of discursive terror and censure (i.e. “political correctness”), strictly enforced by the whites, they simply prohibited —they banned from speech— any words and expressions that could be construed as “racist.”

Socially, economically, nothing changed, nothing had to change in the “ghetto” (which word, in the process, has been, it too, forbidden).

So the best way to keep the social order intact and immutable and to preserve the social truce with non-whites in America, especially blacks, is to use this Newspeak to praise them instead, and pre-empt thereby the utterance of any “slur.” The hypocrisy and sur-reality of this arrangement have emerged in very bold relief with the latest US election, but the social phenomenon has been brewing, with extraordinary and far-reaching results, for over 30 years.

What this discursive policy/technique effects is remarkable: it maintains the status quo ante on the one hand, yet it also does precipitate two additional, crucial situations: 1) it divides folk (man vs. woman, black vs. white), and, most importantly 2) it propagandizes, on the other hand, a thoroughly fake ecumenism by which we are implicitly harnessed, via (precarious) labor and brain-washing, to the Structure itself. If there is job insecurity, division, mistrust, and divisiveness all around, then the “State” with its racial quotas (affirmative actions) and fanatically solemn proclamations of respect for otherness and diversity, emerges as the sole anchor of salvation.

We have thus come full circle: with the familial nucleus undermined and jobs administered with a dropper, we are approaching, slowly but surely, a model of insect society.

The last, though certainly not least, piece of engineering in this mechanical puzzle revolves around the issue of breeding and sex —or “gender” as is now the fashion to say. Hence all this extraordinary emphasis, especially in the US, on abortion. It has to do with the capillary administration of function and resource allocation within the human ant-heap. Since credit is centralized and nothing is really left to chance, clearly, the issue of breeding and sex is of paramount importance for the Techno-Structure.

And that is when this LBGT movement comes into play. It is just the latest act in this grand discursive production of “diversity.” There are big (vested) Interests, and big money, behind this; this much is patent. Why? Why would the élite whites, who are notoriously the most racist, sexist and homophobic people on the planet all of sudden affect such an allegedly maniacal concern for the civil fate, for the so-called “rights” of homosexuals and transsexuals —as if nothing else mattered at the leftist end of the political spectrum? It seems absurd.

And the only reason for this hammering propaganda is, I think, to effect in people’s mind —much as the white males in charge of this game have succeeded in conditioning people to profess that white males are the most horrifying breed on the planet (how they pulled this off is amazing)— that “gender” is a (phallocratic) construct, and, therefore, that so is “the family” and the genitorial role of both sexes.

What the System wants is asexual or sexually interchangeable human larvae that can morph at will into workers, warriors, and/or breeders.

Women, e.g., now figure prominently in the highest echelons of the US military and a year ago the top brass lifted the ban in the US army against transsexuals. Q.E.D.

Thus techno-structural “gender” is discursive food for the masses awaiting proper regimentation in the hive. Up there, at the top, among the eugenicized elites, the patriarchal, macho model may be retained (possibly with a few modifications), for they still think and manage things in conventionally feudal terms.

The issue of violence is very present in your works, ranging from Nazism to imperialist wars, and so on. What is, according to you, the best way to break a violent process?

Yes, I am heavily fixated on it: on what Tolstoy called “The Law of Violence.”

How to get rid of it? Very difficult question.

I have for some time now attacked the study of various new fields (criminal and social psychology, zoology and entomology, and Buddhist epistemology) in order to understand, a little, how our psyche works, what consciousness is; how we form desire, and how hypnosis plays into all of this. I have just begun; I hope I will have semi-decent answers soon enough.

As a preliminary response to this vital issue, my conviction, especially in light of the profound influence Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class has exercised on my way of thinking, I tend to believe that we have to divest ourselves, to tear off, as it were, from our psychic “chassis” any vestige, any stratum, any accreted layer of what Veblen identified, qualified as “barbarous traits.” These are manifestations, ways of being of a predatory mindset —a mindset, that is, which is characterized a constant, persevering proneness to “get ahead” of others, to bully them —either brutally or in subtle psychological fashion; to push them of the way; to exploit (the labor of others as a matter of course), to think in clannish, exclusionary terms; to prey on whatever and whomever the mind thus disposed perceives as weak. At first blush, these definitions might sound trite and moralistic, but it is not so. If one ponders this over, he will realize that the inner hierarchical structures of our society is organized, for the most part (if not in toto), along these very lines. The vast majority of us are taught from an early age, not so much to cooperate as to secure a position of privilege. E.g., think of how proud are all those parents —all those mothers and fathers, who have spent tens of thousands of dollars in academic tuition—Their kids are “set,” prestigiously so.

But what is there to be really proud about? That your children have tenaciously succeeded into making a lot of money? That’s fine; yes, not everybody can do that. But what about beauty, making beautiful things; what about cooperation or peace?

In the rat race, we strive to “grab” for ourselves and our own a piece and/or a position of the “Vested Interests”: let the rest fend for themselves and/or rot in fiery hell (for all we care).

It is this psychic “software” that one has to excise, wholesale, from his adperceptive apparatus —through a patient work of re-education, through a re-design of school curricula, in which emphases need to be shifted, new topics introduced (e.g. mandatory study of music and harmony from first to last grade), and for which an overall approach to learning and doing ought to be developed.

It is understood that such an overhaul of the educational system should go hand-in-hand with a major renovation movement in society itself, and especially in the economic sector (monetary reform, biological farming, vegetarianism, etc.)

You have studied the terrorist phenomenon. Do not you think that the terrorism of Daesh and Al Qaeda funded and supported by the United States and Great Britain are in the continuity of Nazism since it serve the same interests, those of US imperialism and its British, French, and European allies?

In a sense, yes. Clearly, Nazism and Islamist terrorism are very different entities, but I suppose you could construe Nazi Germany as a giant, national terrorist movement that was ultimately used to “push” events in a certain direction in order to trigger other reactions that would eventually settle the issue in favor of the manipulators [which is by definition precisely what terrorism has been invented for]—the main difference being in this case that Germany was a “terrorist nation” and the Islamist groups, instead, are forces of political violence that “move” within the confines of what are now proverbially known as “loose networks.” The analogy is overall warranted, I think.

How do you explain the total absence of a strong anti-imperialist movement at a time when imperialism is breaking countries and nations? But where is resistance to imperialism gone?

That is a question I myself have been battling with, restlessly, since 9/11. “They” have set things up in such a way that, unless you are able to prove consistently that all inciting incidents and wars (at least since the time of the Cold War, in a systematic fashion, but even before) are fake and staged (on both sides), unless you are able to do so convincingly, i.e., overcoming people’s inertia, fear, and superstitious allegiances, you will smash your teeth against a solid brick wall.

They will not listen to you. They will brand as you a kook, a conspiracy nut or what have you.

Think of Gulf One, Iraq Two, but even the incident of the Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, or the “Sitting War” in 1940, the “Show Trials” of Stalin, etc. There is constant stagecraft at work. Theatrics.

And then there is the “mass.” Us. Apparently, we merely want to get by, eat, drink and make merry. Honestly, who really wants to spend, say, five or more hours a day reading alt news and denounce this, that, or the other?

And yet, many of us feel they have to do so.

In general, people want job security and live their lives in peace. It is hard as it is to earn a living, not to mention if you have children. And on top of this, one has to worry about being deceived by “State Interests” into believing in the existence of various “enemies,” into going into war, the “wrong” sort of war, into buying food that is poison, etc. And it is difficult, because the vast majority of us depend on the System, thoroughly.

How is one to rebel? At what cost? And what for? You protest against injustice, you defy, you denounce—non-violently, it is understood. Good. How many will rise and follow, to protest civilly? How many will stand up and be counted? What will have this all meant in the end? For my modest part, I have tried to denounce falsehoods and injustices; in the hic et nunc, I have invariably found myself completely alone.

Incidentally, in one of her tunes, Sheryl Crow, the popstar, sings about an “All-American Rebel.” And I wonder: what is an “All-American Rebel”? I have never seen, heard, or read about one. Where is “rebellion,” in the US, or elsewhere? Where are the (political) heroes? What do heroes really do? What do they even mean in pop iconography? Do we actually need heroes? And if so, to achieve what exactly?

And who says, moreover, that your average man or woman wants to rebel, even if he or she disbelieves part of what s/he is told? There is, again, that barbarous mindset that prevents one from seeing things as they are. When you pursue privilege all your life —and 99 percent of all people do—, you become wedded to a certain lifestyle, a certain modus vivendi; you become dependent on the Structure; you perforce become loyal to it.

In my short essay “Techno-Structure,” I have indeed acknowledged that it is no less true that, often, the dominant feeling within the mass is not so much one of defiant indignation as one of frustrated lack of identity, of purpose. Everybody wants to be a boss; everybody wants a piece of the Hollywood action; everybody wants to be famous, everybody wants followers, groupies, and friends; everybody wants glamour, toned bodies, and fashion lifestyle; everybody wants to be part of the great power narrative.

Veblen, again, said it: the lower strata of society are hyper-conservative; they will protest when they starve, otherwise it is unlikely, for their mental processes, on account of the spiritual debilitation to which they are continuously subjected, are essentially barbarous.

In sum, popular reactions are divided according to the social stratum in which you live.

In principle, dissent, if any, can only originate in the middle class. The upper middle classes and hyper-modern aristocracies are in charge: their job is to resist change. Of the lower classes, we have spoken.

If you are middle-class (intelligentsia), you can afford to dissent only if you come from a wealthy background, which might have allowed you to clear your mind of barbarous obfuscation (through well-guided nurture, study, and good teachers), and which gives you the liberty and financial ease to think and say what you really believe. We are talking of a very exiguous minority here.

For the most part, the middle-stratum is generally bent on seeking pleasure, and little more. They do so either by compromising and keeping quiet, when they are somewhat alert, or, as is more generally the case, by behaving erratically, confused as they are by the tug-of-war between wholesome sentiment on one side and barbarous, violent habits on the other—habits which organically tie them to the supporting structures of the System (e.g., buying into the current banking-financial system of exploitation, “patriotic support” of war, implicit racism, allegiance to oligarchism, etc.)

At the “bottom of the pyramid,” as they say, people are too busy making ends meet: they have no time to read books, study music, discuss alt news, worry about Syria, or comment on the latest exegesis of Heidegger. They could not care less about the history of Hitler, 9/11, the deeper mechanisms of terrorism, or the fate of dissent. Which is also the case for a large portion of the hedonistic middle stratum, as has been said.

True, in the 1960s, through the end of the 1970s, we have seen the middle class initiate movements of protest in the universal name of social justice and peace. There was good in that. And to a large extent, these movements appeared to have been genuine. They did cause some concern for the Establishment.

They exist no longer. They have been defeated, systematically so. I recount part of that story in my The Ideology of Tyranny.

However, if you look closer, you also notice that all this flurry of grassroots enthusiasm that animated the 60s was itself very much choreographed. Take Vietnam: it was not by accident that people started taking to the streets to protest against the war, massively so, in 1968. That is, at the very time when the apparatus knew that the war was lost. Which is to say that nothing really happens in our System unless some component thereof allows it.

It was easy/easier to “protest” during the Cold War; it was easy to strike the dissenting pose back then because the established Left was there already to provide you with a stage to do so; it had all been paid for. It did not take any guts to be defiant; they wanted you to. The political template chosen to wage power was then one of dichotomous antagonism: the “sides” were pre-arranged; you just had to pick one, and “militate.” This was patent in Europe; we Italians have a strong recollection of this (especially the ten years of latent civil war and terrorism in the 1970s); we had Europe’s most powerful Communist party.

And, in Europe, the progeny of those diehard Communists that so vehemently manifested against ”US Imperialism” in the 70s and 80s form these days the most enthusiastic “Americanists” of the planet: “Liberals” all of them: they were the ones who cried tears of bliss when Obama was elected president in 2008. So much for intellectual consistency and the “culture of dissent.”

When that sort of theatrics had exhausted its usefulness, again, it was disposed of. And the whole “Red” apparatus, once so imposing and awe-inspiring, just disappeared, overnight, without a sound. And, now, lo and behold, nobody, anywhere takes to the streets anymore: the political will, money, and societal arrangements devised for the purpose are no longer there to support the critical masses for this type of show to go on: and note that at the time the marches were to benefit Left-wing parties exclusively, not social justice or peace per se. To a large extent, it was all artificial, artificial dissent.

The “Left” has been stripped of that apparatus; it is now naked; you can see what it is made of: the usual group of bourgeois that will do whatever the upper class pay-masters will tell them to do. And today, indeed, the Left has been entirely reduced to the platform of LBGT. The “Left” does not exist; it never existed, really.

One could thereby conclude that, in this regard, we have come full circle to a sad ending. But, then again, what is there to be sad about? And I wonder: was there ever a golden age of dissent? Was there a real time of glory, of mass awareness and resistance versus the scourge of injustice and the perpetuation of violence?

I think not. In the end, those who have responsibly and unconditionally opposed violence and injustice have always, and unfortunately, been few and far between. Lone wolves.

Possibly it will change. I hope so.

Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Who is Dr. Guido Giacomo Preparata?

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, October 25th, 1968, Dr Preparata was raised in the United States, France, and Italy. He obtained a B.S. in economics at the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali (LUISS, Rome, Italy), a Master’s degree in Economics and a PhD in Political Economy at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, USA), and an Mphil in Criminology at the University of Cambridge (UK). Further graduate and undergraduate coursework in financial history, applied mathematics, economic theory, and international economics was completed at Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the London School of Economics (LSE).

He first worked as a research associate at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI, Palo Alto, USA); he subsequently joined the research division of the department of Supervision & Regulation at the Bank of Italy, Italy’s central bank; and from 2000 to 2008 he taught political economy at the University of Washington. In 2005, as a Visiting Professor of Economics and Fulbright Scholar at the University of Jordan, in Amman, he has conducted research on Political Islam, Terrorism, and Islamic Economics. In 2012, he joined the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, as a Senior Lecturer of Social Sciences, and before coming to the Gregorian, he served as a Lecturer at Kwantlen Polytechic University in Vancouver, Canada, where he taught the sociology and psychology of criminal behavior.